CRANAplus wel­comes the announce­ment of $11.7 mil­lion in gov­ern­ment fund­ing towards the employ­ment of 20 Nurse Prac­ti­tion­ers in West­ern Aus­tralia for two years as part of a pilot pro­gram that aims to improve access to high qual­i­ty pri­ma­ry care.

The pro­gram, joint­ly announced by the Fed­er­al and West­ern Aus­tralian gov­ern­ments on 20 Feb­ru­ary, will fund Nurse Prac­ti­tion­ers to work inde­pen­dent­ly and with­in mul­ti-dis­ci­pli­nary teams to pro­vide free ser­vices to patients.

CRANAplus CEO, Kather­ine Isbis­ter, says that ​“CRANAplus wel­comes the lead­er­ship shown by Aus­tralian and West Aus­tralian Gov­ern­ments in recog­nis­ing the role of Nurse Prac­ti­tion­ers in pro­vid­ing high-qual­i­ty pri­ma­ry care.

“This pilot is an impor­tant step towards a strong, sus­tain­able, and ful­ly staffed rur­al and remote workforce.

“Nurse prac­ti­tion­ers already do an out­stand­ing job in sup­port­ing the health of com­mu­ni­ties across the state and this pro­gram must be seen as an acknowl­edg­ment of their con­tri­bu­tions to date.

“This pro­gram, by empow­er­ing mod­els of care that allow NPs to work at their full scope of prac­tice, can hope­ful­ly pro­vide more wide­spread oppor­tu­ni­ties for NPs to make a dif­fer­ence, there­by reduc­ing pres­sure on our health­care sys­tems and improv­ing access to care.

“We are hope­ful that the pro­gram will be tri­alled in rur­al and remote areas – and not just in West­ern Aus­tralia. We hope it can act as a foun­da­tion for the broad­er util­i­sa­tion of the Nurse Prac­ti­tion­er work­force across all states and territories.”

Media enquiries
Sam Richards
Ph: (07) 4047 6400
E: communications@​crana.​org.​au